Wilhelmina+Benn

Midwife Wilhelmina Benn, nee Gorn, was charged with murder in the March, 1906 abortion death of Otilia Winker of Maywood, Illinois. She was not jailed in this case.

In June of 1916, Rosie Kawera of Chicago paid. Wilhelmina Benn, a licensed midwife, $10 for an abortion. Rosie went into the bedroom, where Mrs. Benn inserted what Rosie called "a little pipe." Mrs. Benn told her to keep it in overnight and to phone whenever she got "sick." Rosie died at Oak Park Hospital on June 14. “Aged Woman is Acquitted on Murder Charge,” //Chicago Tribune//, Mar. 8, 1918, says that Benn, then 74 years old, was acquitted in the abortion death of Mrs. Rosalie Kowers of Maywood. I've been unable to determine if this is a muddling of Rosie Kawera's name or if this is an additional abortion death attributed to Benn.

On New Years Eve, 1917, 40-year-old homemaker Victoria Chmileuski died in her Chicago home from an abortion perpetrated by Wilhemena Benn, who was acquitted on in March of 1918.

Benn was born in Germany in 1847, and immigrated to the US around 1886. She died in 1927.

Source: Leslie Reagan, When Abortion Was a Crime, citing an inquest held June 15, 191